The present invention relates to a method for controlling a hanging conveyor system having a revolving hanging conveyor which is equipped with a plurality of conveyor pockets arranged one behind the other, a feed device by which individual conveying carriers, Such as clothes hangers, are introduced at a transfer place into one conveyor pocket each, the feed device being provided with an individualizing device by which the conveying carriers to be introduced are spaced apart from each other, and a control device.
Such a method is known, for instance, from EP 0 517 677 B1. The hanging conveyor system serves to sort conveying carriers, such as articles of clothing hanging on clothes hangers. The conveying carriers are fed in random sequence to the endlessly revolving hanging conveyor system. For this purpose, one or more transfer places are provided at which a feed device is arranged. Each conveyor pocket is developed to receive a single conveying carrier. In order to make certain that in all cases only one conveying carrier is fed into a conveyor pocket, the feed device is provided with an individualizing device by which the individual conveying carriers, i.e. the hooks of the clothes hangers, are separated and spaced from each other. The individualizing device consists of an inclined rail along which the clothes hangers slide and of separating fingers which are arranged above the rail and can be moved in vertical direction. The hooks of the clothes hangers come against the separating fingers and are prevented thereby from sliding further. The presence of an article of hanging on a clothes hanger at the last separating finger is recognized by a sensor, thus avoiding having a further conveying carrier coming against this individualizing device before the device has been fed the preceding conveying carrier.
The capacity of such a hanging conveyor system is limited solely by the fact that in each case only one clothes hanger hook can be introduced into each conveyor pocket. An increase in capacity is possible only by increasing the speed of conveyance and/or reducing the distance between the individual conveyor pockets. However, there are limits on the speed of conveyance. The conveying carrier arrives at the transfer place only under the action of gravity after the separating fingers have released it. It follows from this that the time which passes from the moment of the release of the conveying carrier until its arrival at the transfer place depends on the weight of the conveying carrier and on the frictional conditions between the clothes hanger hook and slide rail.
clothes hangers with hooks of metal or plastic are used in the garment industry. The cross section of the clothes hanger hook also varies. For reasons of stability, a wire hanger can have a substantially smaller cross section than a plastic hanger. In particular, stores are supplied with articles of clothing from the entire world. There is no world-wide standard for clothes hangers. These stores are now confronted by the problem that it must be possible for every conceivable shape of hanger to be handled by them. For sorting, different articles of clothing, such as coats, clothes, trousers, or jackets, of different sizes are fed, hanging on different types of clothes hangers, to the hanging conveyor system. Since the articles of clothing on clothes hangers are introduced while still unsorted into the hanging conveyor system, the time which passes from the time they are individualized until they reach the transfer place differs for each conveying carrier. The conveyor pocket must therefore move sufficiently slowly past the transfer place in order to be certain that it also finds in front of it a conveying carrier which it can take over. On the one hand, an increase in the speed of conveyance beyond a certain amount entails the danger that individual conveyor pockets may not be loaded if a conveying carrier is not present at the transfer place. On the other hand, the danger that the conveying carriers, which are accelerated by the transferring into the conveying pocket, are shaken since they were previously resting at the transfer place. Upon being shaken, the articles of clothing hanging from the clothes hangers may drop off.